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Opini
Lane Anasazi 9/23/13 . chapter 17 Great story in general. I have to respect the length and dedication, as well as the attention to detail, plot-wise. I have a few thoughts on what you could do to improve this story. 1. Definitely the easiest thing, and the thing that would improve it the most, would be to get a beta or betas. Your writing, while good, is desperately in need of an editor. You consistently make mistakes, either typos or syntax errors, about once a paragraph. I'm not a grammar nazi by any stretch of the imagination, but errors really distract from the story. If every 20 seconds I'm tripped up by a typo, it prevents me from sinking into the story. It's a real detriment to what's otherwise a nice piece of writing, and it's an easy fix. Get another pair of eyes on this (or two). 2. Avoid going on tangents. You don't do this often, but it's distracting when you do. In this chapter, there's about 700-900 words about the intricacies of Harry's exercise routine. I get the sense that physical exercise is something that's important to you, and I'm all for having that shine through in the writing, but here, you over-explain. It's the writer's job to strike a balance, to choose the right spots, to craft a framework for the reader's imagination to fill. When you fall into the trap of over-explaining, it's like when a writer lovingly and painstakingly details every single stitch of a character's (usually a female character's) outfit - it's too much. The same could have been accomplished with 5% of the words and trusting the reader to fill in the blanks. Likewise, I believe earlier in this book, when Harry is learning Alchemy, there's what seems like a Chem 101 lecture inserted into the chapter. While that kind of thing is fascinating to many people (including me), it doesn't have a place in a narrative like this. You're talking about alchemy, which for all intents and purposes is a plot device. It serves a narrative function. So as readers we need to know what it can do, the limits of it, why Harry would want to pursue it, etc. We don't need to know the WHY of how it works in more than the broadest, most general terms. It adds nothing to the story. 3. Start shying away from rehashing canon events. This one is more of a style thing, but so far, we've been treated to a very through, very well done series of "how would my version of Harry react to everything that happens in the books?" Like in this chapter, you have Hermione wanting to research the Chamber, the rouge bludger, and Dobby's nighttime appearance. All stuff that happened in the book, all with your own unique twist. There's nothing wrong with this, per se, but if you don't break away from this trend pretty soon you're going to make your main character less interesting. Making different choices, different friends, having this political agenda - there's enough difference where we should start to see that show up in the story, not as "canon with a different paintjob," but as a brand-new foundation. If you keep adding and changing things - the vampire princess, Harry's unique abilities, his group of friends, the way he's trying to change Hogwarts - it's going to start seeming pretty odd how the overarching plot keep snapping back to canon events. I get that it's more comfortable to do it that way, because you have this built-in framework to work from. You have a way of presenting Harry, you have a way you want him to act, and it's just a matter of lining him up with the events of the books. But if you keep doing it, you're going to write yourself into corners, twisting events into more and more implausibilities to keep him on the canon traintrack. It would be infinitely more interesting to see him break into the wilderness and start telling his own story. But that's just my opinion.